From the Jaws of Victory
by Scott Washburn
Summary: Ever wonder what was happening at Hell's Gate while Jake was off rallying the clans? Read on! Note: this is sort of a prequel to my "Aftermath" stories.


From the Jaws of Victory

By Scott Washburn

Captain Harriet Kim hesitated at door of Colonel Quaritch's office and then rapped on the door frame. "Colonel? Can I come in?" The commander of the RDA Security Forces on Pandora looked up from his desk, and waved her on.

"Come in, Captain, what have you got for me? Have you found the renegades yet?"

"Uh, no, sir, I'm sorry. The recon force reports that one of the lab modules has been removed from Site 26, so they definitely were there, but there's no sign of them now. They must have gone deeper into the vortex or we would have spotted them."

"Why didn't the satellites pick them up during their move?"

"There were no satellites over that area at the time this was happening, sir. As you know, we don't have complete coverage. Just bad luck, sir."

"Dammit, I told the home office a dozen times we need a full set of birds up there! Damn penny-pinchers. How the hell am I supposed to run this operation on a shoe-string?"

Kim had heard his rants about the lack of support from Earth many times, so she just said:"Yes sir."

"All right, we'll do it the hard way. Notify Squadron 2 that we'll be doing a sweep of that area in the morning. We'll track them down."

"Uh, sir, something else has come up that Major Halstead thought you ought to see first." She held out a computer pad.

"What?" demanded Quaritch.

"Satellite scans of the vortex and the regions surrounding it, sir." She laid the pad in front of him and paged through a series of images, pointing out the little colored blobs on them. "There seems to be an influx of natives towards where the Omaticaya refugees are gathered. Yesterday there were only a few hundred of them there, today there are six or seven hundred and as you can see in these images, there are at least a dozen other groups—maybe fifty to a hundred in each one—heading towards them."

Quaritch frowned and looked closely at the images. "What's your estimate of the situation, Captain?"

"Two possibilities seem the most likely, sir. One is that these are aid parties coming to help their neighbors in their… uh, time of need. The other is that these are…"

"War parties."

"Yes, sir."

"Assembling for a counterattack."

"Highly likely, sir. And if that is the case, I'd recommend against sending a small force into the vortex until we're more certain of their capabilities and intentions." Quaritch made a sour face and tapped his fingers on the desk for nearly a minute. "It's not like the renegades have anywhere to go, sir," offered Kim. "Eventually they will run out of supplies or power and have to give up or die."

Quaritch straightened up in his chair. "Correct. Very well, we'll hold off on the search for now and see what develops. Keep me informed of any changes in the status of the hostiles."

"Yes, sir." Kim saluted and left the office. She breathed a silent sigh of relief once she was out of earshot. The simple fact was that Quaritch scared the crap out of her. Not in a physical sense—although his body-building mania seemed a little strange—he'd never made any inappropriate moves toward her. But his command style was unlike anything she'd ever encountered from a high-ranking officer. He acted more like a top-sergeant than a colonel. It seemed like he needed to be the biggest, toughest, meanest SOB in the brigade. Granted, that probably wasn't a bad tack to take with a bunch of mercenaries, but his lead-from-the-front methods often seemed to be at the expense of rational analysis and planning. He would sometimes make spur-of-the-moment decisions that bordered on the insane. Take the incident the other night when the 'renegades' made their escape. Quaritch had to _personally_ try to shoot them down. He put everyone in the control room at risk by opening the airlock door and dashing outside with a weapon. Hell, if he'd just kept his head and ordered Missile Control to fire, Sampson One-Six wouldn't have made it a half-klick beyond the fence. Of course that would have killed everyone aboard… Murder? Kim wasn't sure what the regulations had to say about that. She'd have to check.

Quaritch _could _make good decisions. He'd made one just now by refusing to send a small recon force deep into hostile territory. He _would_ listen to advice when he was in the mood. But lately he seemed to be in the mood less and less. It was clear that he was just itching for action—any sort of action. He'd been on Pandora for years and apparently the low-level skirmishing with the natives and the routine patrolling wasn't enough for him. He hadn't made any secret that he thought open warfare was going to break out with the Na'vi soon and he couldn't conceal the fact that he hoped it did. And his enthusiasm for battle was contagious. More and more of the troops were eagerly looking forward to combat. _They think it's all going to be like what just happened: blasting helpless targets who can't fight back. What if it isn't?_

Kim reached the small cubicle that served as her office and was about to sit down when Major Sam Halstead waved her into his somewhat larger office. Halstead was the second in command after Colonel Quaritch and he also commanded the infantry segment of the Pandora security force. He was officially designated a battalion commander even though his force only consisted of two companies—one of which was commanded by Harriet Kim. Colonel Quaritch referred to his command as a brigade and considering the diverse nature of its equipment and missions, that probably wasn't a bad description, even though in size it was little larger than a typical battalion in most Earth armies. The problem was that there were more jobs than there were people to do them. As a result, nearly all of the officers wore more than one hat. Halstead, in addition to commanding his battalion, was also the brigade S2, the intelligence officer. Kim was his assistant as well as a company commander.

"So? What did he say?" asked Halstead once she was seated and the door closed.

"He agreed to hold off on sending out a search mission to find the escapees until the situation becomes more clear."

"Well, thank God for that. I don't know, Harri, but I have a very bad feeling about this."

"You think the hostiles pose a real threat, sir?"

"I think they do now. I've been here a long time, Harri. Too long, maybe. But it seems like we've done nothing but underestimate the Na'vi from day one. Just because they don't have high-technology we assume they're stupid. Oh, we respect their size and strength and their woodcraft, but we still think they are just simple savages. We think that any problems we have with them can be solved by applying sufficient firepower. We might be on the verge of finding out just how wrong we are about that." Halstead massaged the bridge of his nose and sighed. Kim looked at her boss. There was an awful lot of gray in his hair these days. She had only been on Pandora four years, but Halstead was on his third tour. He was a good officer and she respected him.

"Sir, our firepower _is_ pretty formidable," said Kim. "Our hunter-killer missiles are extremely reliable and quite capable of taking out Na'vi and their banshee mounts."

"And how many of those missiles do we have in our stocks, Harri?"

"Uh, I'm not sure…"

"I just checked. After the rather profligate expenditure of them against the Omaticaya hometree last week, we have 19,459 missiles of all types in our inventory. Less than two full loads for all of our helicopters and the launchers in the defense towers."

"Sir, the satellite images only show a few thousand Na'vi heading this way."

"I was just studying the latest batch, Harri. The pattern they show is frightening."

"Sir?"

Halstead tapped a few keys and brought up the pictures on his display. "I've been analyzing these based on time and distance. We spotted the first batch of incoming Na'vi at 0900 the day before yesterday, remember? If we assume they departed at dawn, then they are almost certainly from this village in Sector F-94, right here. That's the closest village to the Omaticaya's old home tree. The next batch appears here, four hours later."

"From the next closest village," said Kim. She didn't like where this was going…

"Yes. And if we plot the appearance of the rest of the incoming parties we see that they all correlate with the time it would take messengers riding banshees to get to them from where the Omaticaya are now. These latest images show a dozen new groups on their way. And the truly scary thing is that it would appear that only a very short period elapses from the estimated time of arrival of the messenger to the departure of the war party. It is taking them almost no time at all to decide to come. You'd expect that a decision like that would take some _time_, but it isn't. I'm thinking that we must have really pissed these folks off, Harri."

"We've never seen this sort of cooperation between the tribes before, sir," said Kim. "In fact, they often seem to fight each other. Would the destruction of one tribe's home really be enough to arouse them like this?"

"Like I said: we've been underestimating them right along. Despite all those years the scientists have been studying them, I'm thinking we really don't know anything at all about the Na'vi or this planet."

"We're still only seeing a few thousand…"

"How many Na'vi on Pandora, Harri?"

"I… I don't know, sir."

"Based on orbital surveys done over the years, we estimate there could be as many as twenty million on the planet. Five or six million on this continent alone. Their banshees give them incredible mobility compared to most primitive peoples. What if these messengers don't stop with just the closest tribes? What if they continue to spread out farther and farther? What if each tribe they visit sends out their own messengers? If even ten percent of them decided to answer the Omaticaya's call for help we would be seriously and royally screwed."

A chill went down Kim's spine. Half a _million_ Na'vi? There were only a little over two thousand humans on Pandora! And for all practical purposes each and every one of them was irreplaceable. Reinforcements were six years away. Ten years if you included the time it would take a call for help to get back to Earth. Even if every human could kill a hundred Na'vi they would still be swarmed over. "So what do we do, sir?"

"I don't know. I'm hoping—praying—that I'm just being an alarmist and that there is no such massive horde coming. But as S2 it's my job to predict enemy actions and intentions. What do you think the Colonel will say if I come to him with this?"

"I think he would be… skeptical, sir."

"I think you're right," said Halstead with a sour laugh. "So for right now we'll keep this under our hats, eh? Tomorrow's batch of satellite images ought to show whether it's time to panic or not."

"Yes, sir."

"In the meantime, I'd like you to use our existing catalog of orbital surveys to plot the location of Na'vi settlements within two thousand klicks and estimate how soon we ought to see war parties departing from them based on my theory of what's happening. Try and include a guesstimate on numbers, too. Pretty boring stuff, I know, but it's important, Harri."

"No problem, sir, I'll get right on it." She saluted and went back to her own desk. As she started to call up the data she needed she remembered that she'd forgotten to talk to the Major about the escape of the prisoners from detention and the defection of Trudy Chacon. She had suspicions that there were more than just the four people involved. But she needed the Major's authorization codes to access the security videos to confirm that. She almost went back, but then decided that this new job was more important. The other thing could wait.

Kim had trouble sleeping that night. A new batch of satellite pics had come in just before nightfall and they had only confirmed Major Halstead's fears: There was an expanding radius of Na'vi mobilization spreading out from the Omaticaya camp in the vortex. Twenty more war parties had been spotted moving this way. Total numbers on the move were over five thousand now. Halstead was planning to meet with Quaritch in the morning and God only knew what would happen then. She tossed and turned in her bunk for a while and then got up and went down to the officers' club.

It was really called the 'administrators' lounge' because the people who had designed the base hadn't seen any need to segregate the military personnel from the civilian workers. But wherever the military personnel congregated, the non-military tended to avoid, segregating themselves anyway. It was an odd situation: historically, frontier forts were usually military installations first and then towns grew up around them, at first for protection, and later to sell things to the soldiers. But on Pandora, the mine and its supporting infrastructure were the reason for being here. The military was supposed to be there to protect the mine. In theory, the civilian administrator was in charge. But the soldiers were still the ones with the guns…

Kim got a drink from the bar and found a seat by herself. A half-dozen other officers were scattered around and there was a small group of civies at the far end. Kim didn't have a desire to talk with any of them. But she hadn't been there more than a couple of minutes before someone sat down across from her. Initially she was annoyed but then she saw that it was Captain Juan Mitchell, commander of the 2nd Air Battalion. He wasn't a bad sort. "Hey, what's up?" she asked.

"I was about to ask you that, Harri. Lotta rumors floating." Kim frowned. In a small community like this, it was damn hard to keep secrets. What sort of scuttlebutt was being passed around?

"Oh?"

Mitchell stared at her for a moment and then snorted. "Okay, if you don't want to talk about it, I won't press you. But what about the runaways? Chacon's technically in my command even though she spends most of her time detached. I'm not real happy with having a deserter on my roster. We gonna go get them?"

"Eventually. No rush."

"Huh. Well, I hope you're right."

"What do you mean?"

"It's no secret that Chacon was spending most of her time with the science geeks. And then she refused to fire when we brought the big tree down. She claimed it was a glitch in her fire control, but nobody believed that. The Colonel certainly didn't when he grounded her. But now she's run off with Augustine and everyone is thinking she's gone native like Sully did. If she's not caught and punished it's going to hurt discipline."

"You think so?" asked Kim.

"You know it will! I don't have to tell you that while most of the grunts are perfectly content slaughtering the natives, there's a certain percent who aren't as happy about it. Hell, I don't like it myself!"

"You don't say?"

Mitchell frowned. "Don't play dumb with me, Harri! You don't like it, either. But we follow our orders and expect our people to follow orders, too. If someone can flaunt orders and get away with it, this command's going to go to hell."

Kim took a long pull on her drink but didn't answer. Mitchell was right, of course: Maintaining discipline was never an easy thing. Their troops were mercenaries—hell, she was a mercenary, too. _How did it ever come to this?_ They weren't fighting for a cause or a country, they were fighting for pay and nothing but their pay. But they were years away from home in a boring yet deadly place with nothing to spend their pay on. Without discipline and a loyalty toward their comrades to hold them together, they were just a pack of armed thugs. And yes, there were bound to be differences of opinion on their treatment of the Na'vi. If those differences were allowed to come out in the open, if the troops were allowed to argue—or even fight—over them, the whole thing was going to fall apart. While Kim might personally sympathize with Trudy Chacon, they couldn't show her any mercy. "Don't worry, Juan," she said at last. "We'll find her and bring her back." She finished her drink and stood up.

"Just don't wait too long, okay?"

"I'm sure things will be settled in a few days. Good night."

The morning did not bring any better news. More Na'vi were coming. A lot more. Kim expected Halstead to meet with the Colonel first thing, but to her surprise, the meeting wasn't scheduled until 1000 hours. With no reason to do otherwise, she paraded her company and did an equipment inspection. This was something she normally delegated to the top sergeant or one of her lieutenants, but today she decided to do it herself. She was pleased to see that everything was in order and the troops in good spirits. She was proud of her company and the thought of it getting chewed to pieces by a few hundred thousand Na'vi chilled her to the bone. But what could she do? What could anyone do?

Finally it was time for the meeting. She arrived early as did just about everyone else. Most of Quaritch's staff were present and somewhat to her surprise so was Parker Selfridge and a number of his people. She caught her breath when it was obvious that Quaritch was also surprised to see the base's civilian administrator there. _Uh, oh…. _Quaritch strode over to where Major Halstead was standing and he didn't look happy. "Sam, did you invite Selfridge?"

"Yes, sir, I did. I thought that this was important enough that he be brought into the loop."

"Dammit! You had no authority to do that!"

"I'm sorry, sir. I could ask him to leave…"

Quaritich gave him a glare that would have wilted any lieutenant to mush. Most captains—including her—would have melted a bit, too. But Halstead just stood there and didn't flinch. After a moment the Colonel growled: "All right, let's get this done." He stalked back to his seat and sat down.

Selfridge had not missed the exchange even though he probably didn't hear what was said. "So what's this all about?" he asked pleasantly. "Trouble?"

"Major Halstead, would you be good enough to brief the Administrator on recent developments?" said Quaritch, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Certainly, sir." Halstead moved to the podium and activated the main display. Some of those all-too-familiar satellite images sprang to life on the wall behind him. "There has been a rather serious development among the Na'vi in the last few days. It would appear that the Omaticaya are not going to take the destruction of their home lying down."

"They took it lying down when we did it!" snorted Selfridge. "What do you think they are going to do now, Major?"

"They are doing what I would do if I was in their place, sir: they are calling for reinforcements. And, unfortunately, they are getting them."

"What? What do you mean?" Selfridge looked far less smug all of a sudden.

"Satellite reconnaissance has revealed that the Omaticaya have apparently appealed to the other Na'vi clans for help. Large numbers of them are on their way to join the Omaticaya. A number have already arrived."

"How many?" demanded Selfridge.

"As of this morning, over nine hundred have arrived at their camp. By the end of today that number will increase to nearly two thousand. At least another twenty thousand are on the move."

"Twenty _thousand_!" squeaked Selfridge. "You can't be serious!"

"I'm afraid I am, sir. And analysis provided by Captain Kim shows that this could easily be just the first wave. The word is spreading outward as fast as a banshee can fly. In another week, there could be a hundred thousand of them on their way."

"My God… What… what do we do?"

"That will be up to Colonel Quaritch—and yourself, sir."

Selfridge turned toward the Colonel, his eyes wide. "You said there wouldn't be a war! That the Na'vi would be so demoralized they would leave and not bother us anymore! What are you going to do?"

Colonel Quaritch got to his feet and glared at everyone in the room. "Apparently," he growled, "the Omaticaya had more backbone than I allowed for. _Considerably_ more backbone than some people in this room! As for what we are going to do, that should be obvious to anyone with military training: The enemy is concentrating his forces, but that concentration is not yet complete. Therefore, we shall strike them immediately, before they can complete it!"

Harriet Kim caught her breath. It was what she expected; militarily it probably was the best move—except for one thing. "Uh, sir? That will mean fighting in the Flux Vortex. As you know, this will seriously degrade the effectiveness of our equipment." Quaritch turned his glare on her.

"I'm well aware of that, Captain," he said icily. "Our objective, however, will not be a pitched battle, I have something else in mind." Everyone looked at him surprise. He got up from his seat and walked around to point at the satellite image. "Here, at the center of the enemy camp. This is our objective. Thanks to Mr. Sully, before he betrayed us, we know that this tree is the focal point of the Na'vi religion. Their whole culture is based around it. And when we destroy it, they will be so shattered, so demoralized, they will never bother us again."

Kim twitched in surprise. This was his plan? This? But before she could think of anything to say, Sam Halstead spoke up. "Sir? Do we have any reason to believe that the destruction of this target will not enrage the Na'vi still more rather than demoralize them? I'll remind you what has happened because of our destruction of the Omaticaya home tree."

"This will be quite a different matter, Major, I promise you that," replied Quaritch. "Rather than just use missiles, I intend to use this opportunity to show these savages just what they are up against. I intend to deliver a few tons of high explosives to the target and utterly obliterate it. When we're done there will be nothing but a smoldering hole in the ground." He turned toward Selfridge. "To do this, I'm going to have to borrow the shuttle."

"The shuttle!" cried Selfridge. "What for? It's not a military vehicle!"

"No, but we can press it into service as such. It will be just what's needed to deliver the payload. I promise you it won't get a scratch."

"I… I'm not sure I can authorize that, Colonel," said Selfridge. "That shuttle costs more than your entire force combined!"

"Yes, it does," said Quaritch, his voice almost a sneer. "One of the many reasons we're facing this situation. Well, since you refuse to cooperate, I'm declaring this a military emergency and taking command of this base and all personnel and equipment."

"What? But… but… you can't…."

"Yes I can. In an emergency I can declare what amounts to martial law. Check the regulations for yourself. And now if you'll excuse me, I have a battle to plan. Sergeant Major? Would you escort these gentlemen out?" The brigade's senior enlisted man, a big brawny veteran who acted as Quaritch's aide, came forward and in only a few moments, all of the civilians were gone from the conference room. Quaritch could not conceal the look of satisfaction on his face. Kim hoped she _was_ concealing the look of shock on hers. The Colonel was right, of course, he _did_ have the authority to take command, but this was so abrupt…

"All right, people, we've got work to do," said Quaritch. "Every minute counts and I want to be able to launch our attack first thing tomorrow." They spent the next two hours going over the details of arming the shuttle and providing the escort. Along with the Dragon gunship, there would be eighty-six of the smaller helicopters—nearly every one they had. It would be a maximum effort.

"Now, Sam," continued Quaritch, "I'm going to drop off your people about here. " He pointed to a spot on the map about five klicks from the target. "I want you to press in and engage any hostiles fleeing from the explosion."

Kim choked off an exclamation of surprise. Major Halstead looked startled, too. "You are planning to commit ground forces, Colonel?"

"Is there a problem with that?" asked Quaritch.

"No, sir, I just thought that this would be an aerial operation only."

"Maximum effort, Major. We need to hit these bastards as hard as we can. Every one we can kill now will be one less we have to kill later."

"But sir…!" gasped Kim.

"Yes, Captain?" he turned his gaze on her and she swallowed hard.

"Sir… our infantry are our most vulnerable troops. The choppers and AMP suits should be fairly safe against anything the Na'vi have, but over the years 90% of our casualties have been among our ground troopers. Our body armor won't stop a Na'vi arrow and due to the neurotoxin they use even minor wounds can be fatal."

"In my command, Captain, everybody fights," said Quaritch.

"Yes, sir, but it was my impression we were going to avoid a pitched battle…"

"_Everybody_… fights."

"I understand that, sir, but can we afford the casualties? I mean even if we kill a hundred of them for every one we lose, it's a net win for them. They can replace their casualties but we can't. Why risk…"

"That's enough, Captain," said Quaritch and there was a note of menace in his voice. Halstead touched her arm and shook his head.

"Yes, sir," said Kim.

Quaritch glared at her for a moment longer, but then turned to the others. "All right then. We all have our work cut out for us. I'm going to want to address the troops this afternoon, but in the meantime, let's move!"

Kim came out of what she could only refer to as "Quaritch's Pep Rally" with a feeling of impending doom. It made no sense to her: at face value, they had every advantage over the enemy, the battle ought to be a walk-over. _'It seems like we've done nothing but underestimate the Na'vi from day one.' _Major Halstead's words came back to her and chilled her to the bone. She'd heard stories of soldiers who had premonitions of death or disaster before a fight, but she'd always sneered at them. Even if the stories were true, she always considered them self-fulfilling prophesies: if you're convinced you're going to die you'll take less effort to keep it from happening. She wasn't so sure now. She went to her quarters and started laying out her gear for tomorrow. Whatever happened, she would be there, at the head of her company.

She was nearly done when she heard someone behind her. She turned and saw that it was Major Halstead. "Sir?" she said.

"Stand down, Harri. You won't be going along tomorrow."

"What? But… but why?" She felt like she'd been punched in the stomach.

"I convinced the Colonel that we needed to leave at least a few troopers behind—just in case. Two of your platoons will be assigned to base security."

"Is this because of what I said at the meeting?" _Left behind? I'm being left behind?_

"No, he left it up to me to decide who stays. It was my decision, Harri." He stared right at her, but she couldn't read his expression at all.

"But, sir…"

"Now, don't argue with me, Captain. If things do turn sour then we need to have at least one person here with a level head on her shoulders. My only other choice would be to leave Captain Johnson. Do you think that would be a good decision on my part?"

Her eyes fell. "No, sir." Johnson was an idiot and they both knew it. He could do his job if someone watched over his shoulder, but the thought of leaving him in command of the whole base…

"And if things don't turn sour, then, well, you won't have missed anything you'll want to tell your grandchildren about anyway, eh?" He slapped her on the shoulder and smiled. Then he walked away, leaving her staring after him.

That night, she didn't sleep at all.

She was on the flight line well before dawn, watching the final preparations for the mission. The ground crews were giving the helicopters one last check-out. The AMP suits and the infantry were being inspected and lined up to board their transports. Most of them were laughing and joking. This was going to be a walk in the park for them—plus target practice.

She spotted Lieutenant Schmidt, her second in command. He'd be in charge of the one platoon from her company included in the attack. She went over to him. "Everything in order, Simon?" she asked him.

"On the bounce, Skipper," replied Schmidt with a smile.

"You stick close to the Major. I want him back in one piece."

"No problem, Skip."

She took a step closer and locked eyes with him. "I mean it, Lieutenant: If you don't bring him back then don't bother to come back yourself."

Schmidt was momentarily startled by her intensity, but then he laughed. "Take it easy, Captain. It'll be a piece of cake."

"I hope you're right." She left him standing there and walked away. _Damn!_ She wanted to be going along more than anything she'd ever wanted in her life. With the interference from the damn flux she wouldn't even be able to follow their progress from here…

"You're up bright and early, Harri," said a voice. It was Halstead. He was in full combat gear, including the bulky command helmet with the extra com gear and Heads-up Display. She looked at him in dismay.

"You… you're going in on _foot_, sir?"

"No choice. The ground's too rough for vehicles and you know I never qualified to drive an AMP suit. Hell, I need the exercise." He smiled. Then he offered her his hand. "Take care of yourself, Harri. You're a damn fine officer and it's been a privilege to serve with you."

She wouldn't cry. She hadn't let anyone make her cry since her first day at the Academy. But the tears were forming in her eyes and she bit down hard on her tongue to stop them. She took his hand and squeezed. "Good luck, sir," she whispered. " I'll see you when you get back."

He nodded and his smile grew broader. "I'll see you, Harri. And don't worry, maybe I'll be Benteen today instead of you-know-who." She stared at him in confusion and he added: "Look it up when you get a chance." He let go of her hand and it automatically flashed up to her cap's visor in salute. He returned it and then turned away and walked toward his helicopter.

She stood there as the massed engines started. The noise pounded on her like a driving rain. The roar from the shuttle's four turbines shook the ground. The brigade lifted off and headed north.

She was still standing there when the last one disappeared into the mists of a Pandora morning.

The End


End file.
